inventory monitoring, to home appliance
and thermostat management, to wearable
devices such as Samsung and Apple connected
watches,” notes Simpson, who, like Ahmed,
notes that new business models are needed for
these low-margin, high-volume transactions.

2 CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONSAND EXPERIENCE

Companies within the expanding
communications industry manufacture,
enable and/or improve a magical device
that consumers look at more frequently and
rely on more heavily than almost any other
consumer product.

According to Deloitte’s “Global Mobile
Consumer Survey,” nearly 90 percent of U.S.
consumers check their smartphone within one
hour of waking up, and about 25 percent check
their phone more than 50 times a day.

The exceedingly high and rapidly changing
expectations consumers and businesses have
regarding their smartphones—as well as the
activities they support—is reshaping the industry.
“The need for a superior customer experience
will continue to be paramount,” Ahmed asserts.
As more and more customer experience takes
place on smart phones, digital consumers are
forming new expectations about the ways
communications companies should interact with
them. One notable change relates to the notion of
a “seamless” customer experience.

“We’ve seen an increased focus onimproving the customer experience fromstart to finish, providing an easier andmore seamless set of interactions betweencarriers, for example, and customers,”Simpson reports. “However, despite theprevalence of customer experience rhetoricand some progress, driving true cross-channelexperiences that absolutely delight customersremains a great opportunity for manyconsumer-facing companies.” Carriers thatsuccessfully enhance customer experiencecan reduce churn and increase earnings (ablessing when pricing plans are at a relativelow point).As download speeds increase via LTE and,soon, 5G as well as through more convenient(and, yes, “seamless”) switching betweencellular and wi-fi networks, consumers’ appetitefor high-quality streaming video has intensified.Asked to describe consumer patterns,Wigginton responds with one word: more.“Consumers have an insatiable desire to watch,hear, share, connect and discuss via mobiledevices,” he says. “We are obsessed with oursmartphones and tablets—they have become anindispensable part of our daily lives.”Besides wanting more of it, consumers alsowant their content everywhere. Consumershave become “untethered,” Shah observes.Previously, we had to sit down to watch HBO